Do videogames and virtual worlds increase or decrease personal potential?

Question by CarinaPapa: Do videogames and virtual worlds increase or decrease personal potential?
We’ve all seen the incredible and amazing feats of technology on the movie screens, online gaming worlds, etc. Certainly they entertain us and offer us the opportunity to ‘vent’ or play with new behaviors we wouldn’t acknowledge or pursue in the real world — but do any of these activities actually improve us or our ability in concrete and measurable ways? I’m wondering if we aren’t (consciously or unconsciously) creating a whole new world of dependencies without making a better world or a better person.

Best answer:

Answer by Anonymous
Mark Slouka wrote a book in the mid-nineties called War of the Worlds (A play on the Wells title) that really lines up with what you’re saying. He discusses cyberspace and the impact of what he calls the “hyper real,” or a false representation of reality.

I recommend looking up Julian Dibbell as well. He wrote an article about someone whose character “raped” another character in an early nineties MMO. Towards the end he discusses how the event–and, particularly, the aftermath–greatly influenced his real-life outlook.

The counter to Dibbel would be the novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, which delves into the negative aspect of the unreal: the hot topic of desensitizing the mind to violence. The lack of consequence for one’s actions, the book would argue, makes the action acceptable, regardless of the moral implications.

But then again, I still went out and bought GTA IV.

What do you think? Answer below!